Helping teens make healthier food choices

NUTRITION Youth Leadership Institute backs students working with stores

Published 6:36 pm, Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Chips and snacks line racks near the door, where Zakariaya Shaikh (right) asks Charles Ollie about what he buys.

Chips and snacks line racks near the door, where Zakariaya Shaikh (right) asks Charles Ollie about what he buys.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

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Charles leaves the store on Silver Avenue in San Francisco with candy. Students from Thurgood Marshall High School are working with stores to encourage them to stock healthier snacks.

Charles leaves the store on Silver Avenue in San Francisco with candy. Students from Thurgood Marshall High School are working with stores to encourage them to stock healthier snacks.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Image 3 of 5

Maurice Ross (right) asks ninth-grader Christopher Carranza about the snacks he buys at stores that are on routes students take to school. The program encourages healthy eating.

Maurice Ross (right) asks ninth-grader Christopher Carranza about the snacks he buys at stores that are on routes students take to school. The program encourages healthy eating.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

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Students (l to r) Delvahn Emerson, Mila Tiesa, being surveyed about his shopping habits, Rolando Hill and Kelvin Bibbs in front of Food Mart along Silver Ave. on Tuesday Dec. 18, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. Students at Thurgood Marshall High School are beginning to work with local merchants to stock healthier foods in the nearby convenience stores. The program is grant funded and coordinated by the Youth Leadership Institute. less

Students (l to r) Delvahn Emerson, Mila Tiesa, being surveyed about his shopping habits, Rolando Hill and Kelvin Bibbs in front of Food Mart along Silver Ave. on Tuesday Dec. 18, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. ... more

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Image 5 of 5

Ninth grader, Christopher Carranza buys a pack of gummy bears at a liquor store along Silver Ave.on Tuesday Dec. 18, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. Students at Thurgood Marshall High School are beginning to work with local merchants to stock healthier foods in the nearby convenience stores. The program is grant funded and coordinated by the Youth Leadership Institute. less

Ninth grader, Christopher Carranza buys a pack of gummy bears at a liquor store along Silver Ave.on Tuesday Dec. 18, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. Students at Thurgood Marshall High School are beginning to ... more

Back then, the San Francisco teen knew a lot of big kids. He still does.

Nationally, 1 in 4 African American children are obese, a statistic mirrored in many Bay Area communities, including the southeastern side of the city where Hill and many of his Thurgood Marshall High School classmates live.

Hill's family adopted a healthier lifestyle, and sports helped the high school senior slim down, but Hill still didn't like the eating habits he saw all around him, at school, or before and after school at corner stores.

And so, when the nonprofit Youth Leadership Institute, which works with young people to improve their communities, came to his school to recruit advocates for healthy eating, Hill and 39 of his classmates applied.

Hill was among the 10 chosen.

"I didn't like the things that happen in this community," he said. "This is a good start for a change."

With a first year grant of $59,000 from the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, the students worked with the institute's program coordinator, Brandon Lee, to come up with a plan.

Calling themselves the Nutritional Food Group, the teens realized they needed to do something about the lines of students outside convenience stores, buying more often then not a bag of chips, candy or a soda - items conveniently located at the entrance or at the cash register and priced within a teen's budget.

At one store off San Bruno Avenue, a few blocks from the high school, a wall of chips 7 feet high and 5 feet wide is one of the first things a customer sees. Nacho-cheese-flavored, BBQ, hot and spicy, sour-cream-and-onion bags full of processed potato or corn snacks, often unnaturally orange or red.

Buying what's offered

Very few fresh or healthy snacks were as obvious, if they were available at all.

"They grew up with this culture and this environment," Lee said. "It's really hard to shift what their environment offers them."

The program reflects citywide efforts to bring fresh fruit and vegetables and other healthy foods to low-income communities. The Good Neighbor Program, in Bayview-Hunters Point, for example, offers technical assistance, energy efficiency upgrades and other support to stores if they stock healthy inventory.

At Thurgood Marshall, the teens decided they wanted to see healthier foods made more readily available at stores along the routes students take to and from school, things like fruit, yogurt or baked potato chips.

But they knew they couldn't go to retailers without convincing evidence that stocking healthy stuff would pay off in sales.

Earlier this semester, they surveyed students at their school to see whether they would buy healthier snacks if they were available.

The vast majority, at least on paper, said they would.

The second step is to poll students at the convenience stores to see what they're buying, how much they're spending and again, whether they would buy better snacks if they were available. Outside one corner store this month, Maurice Ross, 17, filled in a form on a clipboard as he polled his peers about their buying habits.

$5 a day on snacks

Charles Ollie, 16, said he spends up to $5 on daily snacks, which often include an Arizona-brand drink and a king-size candy bar.

After the students compile enough data, they plan to bring the results to store owners and ultimately try to convince them that stocking nutritional snacks would be good for business. The program recently got funding for another year.

"There are a lot of assumptions about young people," said Matt Rosen, vice president of programming at the Youth Leadership Institute in San Francisco. "The young people at Thurgood Marshall are really challenging those assumptions."

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